How Planet Coaster 2’s artists made Hollywood work as a theme park

Jack Griffin: We're often trying to find exactly the right few images and words that sum up what we're after. Being very clear early on about what we want from the pack and, just as importantly, what we don't want is key. Setting these boundaries gives us a good space to explore the theme well and provides the team with a clear vision of what we're aiming for.

Defining what era we wanted to represent in our pack was key; it's the golden age of cinema, large searchlights in the sky, flashbulb paparazzi, movie star glamour, red carpets and premieres were all key. Once we understood the era, this informed the architecture, and then we broke it down from there.

Art Deco is a great style that encapsulates the era's glamour, so we went ahead and created large overviews with this style in mind and broke the buildings into components once we were confident in the broad direction.

JG: Thankfully, we have an existing real-world art style to take inspiration from. It's often about finding ideas that recur in an architectural style. For Gothic, it would be pointed arches, and for our Art Deco theme, it was tiering.

Art Deco is often stepped, so you will find the tops of walls not just ending at a 90-degree angle but stepping away. As the surfaces are often flat, areas of transition like pillars, tops of pillars, bases of walls and tops of walls will have this stepping effect, adding pops of detail and interest.

Once you see it, you start to see it everywhere in Art Deco. Finding those simple rules to grab onto and for the rest of the team to understand helps the process. We also have the challenge of merging a real-world art style like Art Deco with our Planet art style, which is often slightly simplified and chunky.

JG: The first sketch is often something that is loosely added to our overview image. A concept artist will create multiple images illustrating how the park could look with this theme. We’ll then tweak those images to get as close as possible to our vision, as this will guide us through the entire park.

Using that overview image, we then break down the buildings, decorative pieces, bins, benches, etc. into individual components. It’s good to fall back on this image to give yourself and the team confidence that these pieces, which may be basic in isolation, are actually very important when placed in the correct context.

We then work up an asset, let’s say our nice new slot car track ride, through multiple rounds of concept feedback. As it’s going to be modelled, we’ll often give orthographic views to the 3D artists to keep the process smooth. They’ll then model and texture it, with the asset also receiving a hitbox, lights and LODs. LODs reduce the level of detail displayed as you move further away, so you wouldn’t have a high-poly model showing all its detail when it’s just a spec on your screen.

From there, UI will give players control over things like lighting and flexi colour, while audio, rigging and animation, Design and Localisation will all have their own passes. There are many teams involved in the entire process and, depending on the asset, different teams will be needed. Production is the ones who make sure they all work together well.

JG: We’re lucky that Planet Coaster has such a strong aesthetic. It’s simplified, colourful and chunky in proportion. As it’s a rollercoaster game, we get to be a bit more out-there with our designs when needed. Theme parks are often doing really interesting and unusual things with their set dressing, which gives us a lot of space to have fun.

We keep it fresh by making each of our packs as distinct as possible. We’re very mindful of what we’ve done in the past and are always trying to avoid stepping on the toes of other packs. It’s actually great to have all these areas to avoid, as it helps you carve out a distinct look for what you do want to do.

Each pack will have its own unique pieces, but they will all fall under the banner of the Planet style. Sometimes we’ll sweat over whether a crack in a piece of wood is ‘Planet’ enough, or whether that chainlink fence post is thick enough. It may be correct to real-life scale, but we need to ‘chunkify’ it to make it Planet.

JG: There’s always a tricky balance between making assets realistic while still retaining the Planet style. A realistic rollercoaster may have lots of nuts and bolts, which looks very functional, but if we directly copied that into the game, it would look too busy compared to our other assets. We’ll often reduce the noise where there are lots of islands of detail by simplifying and reducing them.

When it comes to the fun and spectacle, thanks to real-world theme park designers, we can get away with a lot of ‘magic’. Turning Cornell Butterworth’s popcorn on its head into a light, or giving the illusion that a book is floating in Vesper’s hand from our Sorcery Pack by hiding a thin metal pole to suspend it. Everything we do, we want to be true to what could be done in the real world. Being true to life adds a lot of charm, and it’s also fun to think about.

JG: There isn’t too much focus on defining a specific story for each ride, as we want to leave plenty of room for players to create their own. We’ve found that when a ride is too closely tied to one particular story or scenario, it can limit how players use it. We’re incredibly thankful to have such a dedicated and creative player base, and we love seeing how they add their own stories to each ride.

Just like with our parade floats, we’ve kept the rides and their themes open enough for players to take them in different directions. We’re always looking to encourage that creative freedom, and sometimes that means the art team stepping back and creating something that can become many different things depending on how a player chooses to use it.

BL: Much of this comes down to designing things in context with one another. We’ll design doors and windows while sketching on top of a mock-up building, create sets of pieces together and break them down into separate parts afterwards, then try them out with existing assets and sketch over screenshots of the game to get a better idea of the final look.

We always keep in mind the broader picture of how our pieces interact with each other, so they look like a set rather than a group of individuals. We’ll often build with the pieces in-game to try them in context and make sure they all work well together as intended. This stage of constantly using the pieces as the player would is absolutely essential, and we’ve caught some pretty bad issues early because of it.

It’s always good for chefs to taste their food mid-cook!

JG: We try not to do anything too bespoke, as this can force players in a particular direction. The best assets are ones which can be used in multiple scenarios while still retaining a lot of fun and charm.

We did make some fun film sets for the park, including cowboy sets and cops and robbers. We also have a boat set, with a green screen behind a wooden boat, as well as lots of other fun bits to add to the story.

JG: I absolutely love the slot car. It’s nailed the era we were going for exactly. It looks glamorous, and the Planet style is spot on. It has just the right level of squishiness we like to see in Planet Coaster 2.

BL: That’s a really tricky question. I’m particularly happy with how a lot of the new architecture turned out, but those pieces are purposefully rather generic to make them easy to use.

If I had to pick one particular piece, I’d say I’m very happy with how our new entertainer, Cornell Butterworth, turned out.

BL: For Cornell, we knew early on that we wanted some kind of movie director as our mascot, and we were asked to make the new mascot more abstract rather than some of our more human mascots from the last couple of packs.

This informed our initial batch of sketches, where we tried a wide range of different approaches. We explored making his body and head a camera, his face a clapperboard, giving him a little cart with an extending director’s chair, and tried a variety of different outfits before finally settling on his current look.

From there, we made a turnaround for the modellers, which also allowed us to solidify the design from multiple angles.

JG: It’s very rewarding to see. Honestly, one of the best parts of the job is seeing players pick up the pieces and rides we’ve been working so hard on for months and create unbelievable buildings and rides out of them.

We’re always looking at what players are making on YouTube and reading the comments there, as well as lurking on the Planet Coaster subreddit and seeing what people are up to and what they’re requesting. It’s genuinely great to see what the community makes, and there’s plenty more to come!